Author: Stilgherrian

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Dive right in!

Like all sensible and rational people, I base my entire life on mass-market Astrology:

So you feel like you’re in over your head? Good! Believe it or not, this is how you’ll learn to swim — longer, faster and farther than you’ve ever done before — metaphorically speaking, that is. Dive in.

Today’s advice seems, in the clear light of a Tuesday morning, strangely compelling. My desk is piled with work, but there’s a certain clarity of focus about what’s important and what’s not. I’m diving in… I’ll report back at day’s end.

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Nice art, shame about the winner

Photograph from Pyrmont Art Prize

On Saturday ’Pong and I popped past the inaugural Pyrmont Art Festival. With the theme “Small is Beautiful”, some 200 paintings and other images were entered, all about a foot square.

Sadly we didn’t get a good look, and we didn’t taste any of the wine or beer. We arrived at 3.45pm and the organizers were already packing things away. Note for next time: on a sunny autumn afternoon, people might not be prompt. 10am to 4pm community events? How quaint! Not everyone’s a soccer mum.

However from what was still hanging, there seemed to be a good range of interesting pieces — plus the usual dross you get in community art competitions. Unfortunately I think one of the dross pieces won — that bland streetscape with the blue ribbon in the photo above. Yes, the dun-coloured walls do say Pyrmont, but it’s hardly unique and it’s hardly Jeffrey Smart.

If we’d had time, I’d have checked out the runners-up and the People Choice awards and named names. But I figure someone official will have done that.

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Iron Anniversary, but not Improved Real Estate

Yesterday, 6 May 2007, ’Pong and I celebrated our 6th anniversary — though this is a family publication so I can’t explain how we celebrated, exactly. Just congratulate us, people, and leave the details be!

Six years makes it our Iron Anniversary — but no, Snarky Platypus, I did not buy ’Pong an iron!

As an aside, check out this list of wedding anniversaries. [Update 7 March 2015: This link seems to have been broken for years, so you’ll have to take my word for it.]

Sure, the traditional ones are there, like paper for the first anniversary, cotton for 2 years, through iron for 6 to the familiar silver for 25 and gold for 50 and so on. But whoever wrote the “modern” gift suggestions is clearly on weirder drugs than I am…

“Desk sets” for the 7th anniversary? “Musical instruments” for 24th? “Conveyances (e.g. automobiles)” for 32nd? “Original poetry tribute” for 46th? And the one which takes the biscuit for me: can you actually imagine someone celebrating 42 years of wedded bliss with their “Improved Real Estate Anniversary”?

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Deeply worried

As the Snarky Platypus and I had lunch today, we overheard a radio advertisement with a female voiceover:

If there’s one thing I worry about more than ill-fitting underwear, it’s other women wearing ill-fitting underwear.

And I agree. Three afternoons a week, I lie in the street or take up a strategic position near a staircase or escalator so I can look up women’s skirts — and I’m appalled at the number of women whose underwear doesn’t form a smooth, form-fitting surface that matches their body contours. I should write to my local MP.